The Glaring Truth
by Rickkatefan
Summary: Dan thinks of Zoé and the fact that she sang for him. Zoe is going to see him because she realizes that she had almost lost him after the bite of the snake. She wants to tell him something...


Author: Steph. (If I could change my name I would be called Steph Lennox: one can always dream, can we?) I emailed her to ask her permission to put this story on the site and she accepted.

Disclaimers: The characters don't belong to me, they belong to Lynn-Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick. Although I wish that Dan Lennox would belong to me, if you know what I mean.

A/N: Yes, what do you want, I am an incorrigible romantic. But sometimes, it is really not super at all, I can ensure you. I adore Dan and Zoe and I would enormously like to see them forming a couple, but I do not think that will happen. Why I say that? Because it is enough that I want something so much that this won't happen. For this reason I like to write because when I do it, it is me who has control, throughout history on the characters. It is stupid, huh? But it is however the principal reason which gives me the desire and the capacity to write.

Now if you wonder why such a title for a history: it is very simple, the other day, I viewed "Auntie Venom" and after Dan has almost died after being bitten by a snake, Zoe put herself later to sing in front of a public and when she sang, she only looked at Dan. She seemed to have eyes only for him so what do I want to make, if not to write the idea that crossed my mind? This is my first Wild Card fic, then be lenient for those who will read it.

Feedback: please, if you want to express your appreciation, please do but if you do not like my work for whatever reason, it's not a big deal for me, but there is no need to let me know.

21:35 -- Dan's apartment

Dan was lying on his bed, fingers crossed under the head, a smile caressed his lips, he didn't stop thinking of what had taken place this evening. Zoe Busiek, her friend and colleague had sung -- sung splendidly indeed. He had been like bewitched by her. Dan had had the impression that she had sung only for him… Dan had the impression that during all the song, the voice of Zoe had become a caress, a caress which surrounded him the heart of an extreme sweetness.

No woman had ever such an effect on him. Did it want to say anything? Did it mean that he loved her? Was it love? These questions did not stop trotting him in the head since he had returned. He never had problem to find somebody, but all the women who had crossed path in his life were only one night stand and what good can come out of this, anyway? Nothing except an enormous left space when these women went out of his life.

Considering it, Dan realized that he wasn't really capable of loving a woman except maybe… Zoe. Yes, Zoe was different -- different from all these women; she was not impressed by him as they seemed all to be and if she was then in that case she hid it very well. Dan had never thought of having children. Well, he had thought about it, but without deepening really the question and then as he really hadn't somebody in his life…

Zoe had three kids, even if they were the children of her sister, she considered them as hers. What should have been made after the tragic death of her sister? To abandon them in their sad fate? Not at all, Zoe would never have and it was a part of the reasons which Dan admired her but it was naturally not something that he was going to tell her. _Oh, hold on Zoe, I have to tell you: I admire you a great deal for everything you have sacrificed for to raise three children of your sister._

No, Dan would never say that to her. And then at the moment, he was still transported by the voice of Zoe which sang these magnificent words:

When I look in your eyes  
I see the wisdom of the world  
In your eyes  
I see the sadness of a thousand goodbyes  
When I look in your eyes

And it is no surprise  
to see the softness of the moon  
In your eyes   
The gentle sparkle of the stars  
In your eyes  
When I look in your eyes

In your eyes  
I see the deepness of the sea  
I see the deepness of the love  
The love I feel -- you feel for me  
Autumn comes, summer dies  
I see the passing of the years  
In your eyes  
And when we'll part  
There'll be no tears no goodbye  
I'll just look into your eyes

A shiver to him traversed his spine and it felt a soft heat wave to invade his body. Zoe Busiek, was well, the only person being able to start such things in Dan Lennox without being present. Dan was left out of his daydream by the ringing of his cell phone. He groaned slightly dissatisfied that somebody calls at this hour. "Mmm… Dan Lennox."

"Dan? It's Zoe. Everything's fine?" She asked anxious. Hardly he had heard her voice that a soft smile took shape on his lips. He lied down and listened to Zoe while smiling. "Yes, everything's fine, don't worry."

"Dan… I -- I would like to speak to you. I have something important to tell you." She said slightly shy. With the words of Zoe, Dan got up in his bed obviously worried by the tone of her voice. "Zoe? Is everything all right?"

"Yes, everything is fine, but I need to speak to you…" Her voice was now only a whisper. "I'm listening, go ahead. Nothing bad happened to the children?" Where did this question come from? He was not delayed to think about it and awaited the answer of Zoe patiently. At the other end, Zoe has been smiling the whole time. "No, Dan, the children are fine, thank you for worrying but what I have to say to you can't be said over the telephone. Well, yeah, that can be said over the phone, but…"

"Zoe, calm down… I'm home if you want…" He began, but was surprised by the doorbell. "Tell me Dan, haven't we just rung at your door?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm going towards the door to open it." He answered her simply. Dan opened the door and his eyes were wide open when he saw the person who was held now upright in front of him. He gently withdrew the telephone of his ear and closed it again and took a step off to let her in as if it were on autopilot. "Dan, close your mouth, looks like a fish out of water." Zoe said laughing.

"But… but what are you doing here?"

"I have just said to you that I needed to speak to you, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"Shhh, shut up." She says gently posing her right finger on the lips of her friend. Dan doesn't say anything anymore and did nothing but smile against the finger of Zoe. She returned his smile before withdrawing her finger of his mouth and to move back slightly so that Dan can pass, he moved towards the living room and his friend followed him without a word which was enough surprising when we know Zoe Busiek.

Dan was held upright behind the counter emerging a wine bottle. It is while raising the eyes that Zoe observed it. She stared at him and Dan has suddenly the impression that the glance of his friend and colleague penetrated the heart to him. Zoe couldn't leave Dan out of her eyes. He had changed since the evening of a few hours ago and he wore now a jean and a dark blue sweater molding -- she could not detached her glance of him.

It was the first time that Zoe took really time to look at him and she realized that he was, well, a beautiful man built-up who did not have only a beautiful face. "Zoe? Earth to Zoe Busiek! ZOE!"

"Huh?" As if she came from some region at the fine bottom of Alaska. "Are you sure you're fine?"

"Huh? Well, yes I am, why are you asking me that?" She asked, surprised by his question. "Well, because it's been at least five good minutes you're looking at me as if I were a ice cream that is melting and which you have a desire for licking." He says as if nothing happened in a smile.

"Well, no, what are you saying? I don't look at you like that!" She said by lowering nevertheless the eyes. Dan couldn't stop from laughing. He knew that even if she would never admit it in front of him. He didn't leave her indifferent; there was a visible sexual tension between them. He had never really hidden to her that she either really didn't leave him indifferent even if she had never said it openly to him.

He loved to work with her because she is full of life and her spirit is really incredible. How much time he surprised himself dreaming to simply wrapping his arms around her. Then maybe, posing his lips on hers and then more passionately before posing soft kisses on all her body, but it was only a dream -- soft dream certainly -- but this was only one dream that would probably never happened.

Zoe was inaccessible for him. Moreover, he realized while reconsidering that he could very well have stayed after being bitten by this rotten Australian snake and he remembered having thought that he did not want to die without Zoe not knowing what he felt for her.

Zoe sat down on the couch in front of the counter behind which Dan always was now pouring the red wine in two glasses. He bypassed the counter and moved towards his friend by holding two glasses in his left hand and the wine bottle in his right hand before putting everything on the small coffee table out of glass just opposite to her. He sat down near her on the couch giving her glass which he had just taken on the table. Their glances locked, Zoe tightened her hand which she involuntarily posed on Dan's and during a few seconds, time seemed to have stopped.

Zoe was the first to be seized again while the man in front of her was always lost to her in his glance. The young woman felt a soft shiver all over her body. Her good sense didn't stop repeating to her: "Zoe, be careful, you will set yourself into a trap. You are falling in love with Dan Lennox and you know, Dan and women…" But her heart, it whispered completely another thing to her.

"It is too late, Zoe, you are in love with Dan and you know it, but you are afraid that he will hurt you and that it will end by leaving you, but if you do nothing and that you don't say it to him you could pass by your chance to know love and then you almost lost him, don't forget it and what you did feel then?" The young woman gently brought the glass to her mouth, took one sip of the red wine without breaking the look.

Abruptly, she felt completely unable to make the least movement and even less to look in another direction. She managed nevertheless to be reasoned and looked at what she was doing when she gently put her glass on the table before Dan does take his, but she prevented it by putting her hand delicately but firmly on his upper arm.

Dan looked at her in an interrogative glance, but Zoe did not answer. Instead, she leaned down and brushed her lips on Dan's before moving back a little in order to be able to scan his eyes to find answers there. But all that she saw in the eyes of her friend was love -- the love he felt for her. By seeing that Zoe couldn't hold a solitary tear to run along her cheek. Then she smiles to him and started to sing the words gently she had already sung a few hours ago, only for him this time.

In your eyes  
I see the deepness of the sea  
I see the deepness of the love  
The love I feel -- you feel for me  
Autumn comes, summer dies

These words came to him this time from the bottom of her heart. Yes, now there was no more doubt, she was in love with Dan and this thought warmed her heart. "Dan, I am sorry. Sorry not to have dared to see the glaring truth that is now right in front of me." She says gently.

Dan didn't want to ask the question and when he did, he was holding his breath unconsciously. "Which truth?" he said in a whisper. "The one that bursts me at the moment which says that I love you…" she said.

Dan felt then as paralyzed, submerged by the feelings and had during some seconds the impression of not knowing how to breathe anymore. He needed some moments to be able to react and as the words did not manage to form in his mouth, he made the only thing he knew how to be able to do so that she knows he felt the same thing.

He leaned forward and put his lips on hers and kissed her slowly, tenderly at first but the kiss didn't stop there, it deepened; the world had stopped for both of them, nothing existed around them, there was nothing more than the sensation of each other, the sweetness of the lips of one another. They parted when the need of air was necessary. "Wow," made Dan, "nobody had never kissed me like that before."

"Yes, wow," whispered Zoe, while trying to take her breath. "Same for me." She smiles. If only kissing Dan made such an effect on her, than what would she feel if they ever decided to go further? And secretly she hoped that their relation would hold on and that they would pass the course in order to go further so that she can wake up close to him in the morning.

He made her a smile, he thought of the same thing as her. He leaned again towards her but slightly turned off his head slightly for the right side and his lips touched at the moment the earlobe of Zoe, she could feel his warm breath, a shudder went down her spine. "I love you too, Zoe." He murmured to her before capturing once again her lips in an passionate kiss.


End file.
